May 09, 2004

Religion of Golf vs Religion of Peace

In the late seventies some of my friends who were avid golfers attempted to join a mail order outfit called "The Religion of Golf". The details are sketchy in their minds but it involved a mail order membership in a California based entity, which was led by a charismatic charlatan whose name is lost. They got their documents and if memory serves me accurately only realized that the effort was moot since as graduate students they had insufficient taxable income to avail themselves of this dubious tax dodge. The issue is addressed in a more serious fashion in the following essay

"But do we have separation of church and state today? No, because the government entity called the Internal Revenue Service asserts the power to decide which is a true religion and which is false. True religions and their ministers are granted important tax exemptions. To preserve religious liberty, such exemptions are necessary. Former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall recognized that "the power to tax involves the power to kill." If government can tax a religion, it can kill it. Thus it has come to pass that along the central California coastline a 440-acre golf course goes untaxed because it belongs to the Japan-based Church of Perfect Liberty, one of whose articles of faith is that God gave us golf as a way of communing with the divine.
As you can image, a certain arbitrary judgment and whim is inevitable in IRS decisions about who is and isn't a tax-exempt church. Pure religious freedom would let anybody create a church. But if tomorrow everybody formed their own personal "Church of the Immaculate Carrot" tax-exempt religion, the government would go broke."
With the ROP (Religion of Peace-Islam) being such a troublesome entity-herehere and here, I would like to know-what constitutes a religion-not just for tax purposes but also for issues such as prison ministries and the expectation of confidentiality. These are important issues and with the ROP acting more like a political movement how can this be made official. How can a major religion be decertified? It is the obverse of a serviceman stating his denomination as the religion of golf and expecting Uncle Sam to provide him with the relevant sacrament.
What should the requirements be for an organization to receive the designation religion? Should there be groups that are grandfathered? Could a requirement be tolerance? Could it be adherence to the 10 commandments or some equivalent? If liberals got to write the rules could those who believe homosexuality is a sin be decertified? Who would interpret the rules?
There must be more case law in this sphere and I would love to learn more.